Advertorial: Node Pole
A new global standard for green data centers? Node Pole is attempting to introduce a recognizable label for “fossil free” stacks. Peter Gothard investigates the vendor’s research and policy underpinning this bold campaign
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espite a political backlash against climate change, most obviously in President Donald Trump’s wholesale rejection of the Paris Agreement in 2017, there is absolutely undeniable evidence that the world is warming up. Data centers, like other industries, have been labelled as a contributor to global warming. There they sit, using power generated by fossil fuels in their racks, burning even more energy in their cooling mechanisms, and releasing dissipated hot air into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, there is a growing demand from the public – enterprise and consumers alike – to know more about the connection between data that sits in the cloud and where that data ‘lives’ in the physical world. It’s a debate about ethics, politics and governance, but one largely driven by an environmental awareness that is growing in spite of climate change denial in certain political quarters. “Climate change is an enormous challenge for the data industry and both companies and consumers are now starting
Magnus Wikman, Chief Commercial Officer
to realize the carbon footprint of digital use,” says Christoffer Svanberg, chief sustainability officer at Node Pole, a data center agency for actors looking towards Sweden. Node Pole is introducing a standardized “Fossil Free Data Label” for the industry, in order to quickly and easily allow enterprise users across the world to work out whether their data is truly “green” in terms of being curated in environments that minimize carbon emissions and use 100 percent renewable energy. Node Pole envisions the standard as a “tool” to directly contribute to climate action, and set a transparent standard for how to run a data center sustainably. “By using the fossil free data label, you stand out from competition and make it clear to customers and consumers that you handle data sustainably” says Svanberg. The plan is to offer various yardsticks in the area of renewable energy, energy efficiency and in measurement of lowcarbon emissions. Essentially, Node Pole wants to see qualifying applicants meet a mark of 100 percent renewable energy for a data center,
If expressed as a country, the Internet itself would be the sixth largest consumer of electricity on the planet power usage efficiency (PUE, a ratio which improves as it counts down to 1) of less than or equal to 1.2, and carbon usage effectiveness (CUE) of 0.19kg CO2 emissions per kWh. The figures are based on the data center performance index (DCPI) from iMasons. These are measured in a variety of ways, ranging from green energy certificates for the renewable energy KPI, to self-collected data for CO2 emissions, or location-based data taken from the International Energy Agency. Node Pole is serious in its approach, namechecking Google which is thought to serve more than 3.5 billion searches per day. A 2016 environmental report by Google reveals the company caused greenhouse gas emissions of 2.9 million metric tons of CO2 but the company offset all of it to achieve its zero emissions target. If expressed as a country, the Internet itself would be the sixth largest consumer of electricity on the planet, with only the US, India, China, Japan, and Russia ahead of it. The Paris Agreement’s goal to reduce the risk of dangerous climate change can, it’s believed, be achieved if the presumption is taken that greenhouse gas emissions peak by 2020, but halve by 2030, and keep halving every decade until 2050. That essentially leaves 30 years to make a positive difference. “The consequences of missing this goal are potentially catastrophic for humanity,” Johan Rockström, director of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has warned.